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Just 13 months ago, then Senator Barack Obama accused his Republican rival in the presidential race, John McCain, of proposing “drastic cuts to Medicare.”
The Obama campaign asserted that Mr. McCain’s health care proposal posed a serious risk for Medicare beneficiaries, by proposing cuts that would total $882 billion over 10 years and would likely require “cuts in benefits, eligibility or both.”
Those accusations prompted a McCain campaign adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin to defend his health care plan, saying it would leave seniors with “exactly the same benefits.”
Now, of course, the tables are turned.
Senate Democrats have proposed reducing government spending on Medicare by nearly $500 billion over 10 years to help pay for the legislation, which seeks to provide health benefits to 31 million Americans who are currently uninsured.
And it is President Obama and his aides who are insisting that seniors would have exactly the same benefits, because the changes in Medicare would focus on eliminating waste and reducing medical expenses in parts of the country that now spend more than the national average while getting the same outcomes for patients.
Not to be left out of the turnabout, Senator McCain, Republican of Arizona, is assailing the Democrats for proposing some of the very same reductions in Medicare that he endorsed during his presidential campaign.
Offering the very first Republican amendment to the health care bill, Mr. McCain proposed sending the measure back to the Senate Finance Committee with instructions to strip out all of the proposed reductions in Medicare spending.
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